Monday, November 12, 2012

New cancer treatment isolates chemotherapy treatment from the rest of the body



Chemotherapy drugs kill healthy and unhealthy cells.  New treatment types have been executed recently to isolate a specific organ; hence, the rest of the body is not affected. Doctors at Southampton General Hospital believe their new method can not only save lives, but reduce the period for recovery.

Two patients in the UK have now received chemotherapy focused on just their liver. The two of them had a rare eye cancer which had spread to the liver.
The operation works by essentially creating balloons inside blood vessels on both sides of the liver to isolate it from the rest of the body.
The liver is then given a load of chemotherapy drugs, which are filtered before the liver is reconnected to the main blood supply.
It means only a small part of the chemotherapy dose goes into the body.
Dr Brian Stedman, a radiologist, said: "To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking."
And we agree, this is by far the best cancer treatment we have seen in a very long time.

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